The US administration’s ongoing review of offshore wind projects will feature different treatment for projects actively under development, when compared to those that have only been proposed, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said last week.
Burgum’s comments, during a visit to a natural gas export terminal in Louisiana, suggested that the administration might apply less scrutiny to wind farms that have already secured federal permits and which were already under construction, reported Bloomberg.
President Trump has halted indefinitely the sale of new offshore wind leases – an action implemented during his first day in office and reflecting his long-running campaign against offshore (and onshore) wind. At that time he also raised the possibility of outright cancellations for existing leases. Trump directed the Interior Department to review the “necessity of terminating or amending any existing wind energy leases” and “identifying any legal bases for such removal”. However, that review now looks as if it might be less radical than had previously been feared. Burgum said that the review was underway, but his tone was less strident. “By executive order, we are looking at all the wind projects that are going on, and existing ones will receive different treatment than those that are proposed. But I won’t be pre-determinant. We are in the process of taking a look at those.”
Burgum criticized the cost of building wind farms at sea, saying that they were nearly three times as expensive as onshore wind farms. “These projects wouldn’t exist without all of the tax subsidies that they’ve received. This is not a young or new industry. It should be able to stand on its own by now”, he told Bloomberg TV.
Burgum said the permitting pause is appropriate.
“People are concerned about the whales that have been dying. People are concerned about blades falling off and washing up on shore. So offshore wind certainly deserved the pause,” he said. “That, I think, is the sentiment of the people that live in those communities and President Trump is responding to those citizens.”
Offshore wind took off in northern Europe more than a decade earlier than in the US, where all attempts to get going faced a raft of state-level and federal permit requirements, as well as multitudinous legal challenges. However, it has not all been plain sailing in Europe either. In the UK, which has some of the most expensive domestic energy generation costs in the western world (a marked contrast to the more fossil-fuel dependent US), the growth offshore has not been matched by improvements onshore. Storage capacity for offshore wind generation remains insufficient, with most building plans facing difficulties similar to those faced in the US.